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the cost and size of the inverter.”
McLaren Applied believes that effi- ciency will be the key to producing bet- ter, more drivable, and more affordable vehicles. As EVs become more and more common on the road, efficiency will be a factor in competition. “At the moment, OEMs are mostly interested in bringing their first generation of vehi- cles to market, but as they start looking more and more to the future, efficiency will become more important to them, and that is where SiC will win out,” said Lambert.
As mobility moves toward electrifica- tion, the semiconductor industry must move accordingly to meet demand. A big part of this will be the significant growth of SiC. “This will be a big shift for the semiconductor industry, which is more used to being driven by other industries,” said Lambert. “However, within this disruption lies opportunity, and those that invest early — and there is significant investment going in at both company and governmental levels — will be able to take significant market share. However, we need to ensure that that investment is wide enough to sup- port the EV industry as it grows rapidly in the coming years.”
Certainly, as Lambert pointed out, SiC inverters will be the dominant product for EVs. The inverter is emerging as one of the most important components, and while the battery is a big contributor to the vehicle cost, the correct optimiza- tion of the vehicle around the SiC can have a major impact on cost reduction.
Battery for EVs
The powertrain system of an EV involves several solutions, from the on-board charger through the battery and its management system. Today, the overall powertrain cost is driven by the battery cost, whose main determinants are the cost per cell and the cost of the mechan- ical protection casing. The size of a bat-
tery is a compromise between driving range and cost: More cells mean more miles driven between charges, but at a higher cost for the solution.
“Up to now, the layered oxide based on nickel-manganese-cobalt, so-called NMC [or NCM] material is dominant for EV applications, as it is the best compromise in terms of performance, durability, safety, and cost,” said Masato Origuchi, a battery system expert at Renault. Given the safety and environ- mental concerns about cobalt, he said, “the main focus of the cathode material development was to reduce the cobalt content while increasing the nickel ratio, as it is the same direction to increase the energy density and to reduce the cost. Recently, cobalt-free cathode materials [have been] highlighted, where there are two approaches. One
RENAULT WILL INTRODUCE NEW SOLID-STATE BATTERIES IN 2030.
is to revive the iron phosphate as an alternative; the other is to eliminate the cobalt from NMC material.”
To create a level of convenience that will foster wide consumer adoption, today’s EV manufacturers are design- ing next-generation silicon anode bat- teries that can fast charge over 80% of their capacity in 5 to 10 minutes, without sustaining physical damage to the battery. “In order to remove cus- tomers’ range anxiety, battery capacity was the first important factor, of course, but once we can offer a certain level of driving range, the next key factor is the fast-charging capability,” said Origuchi. “Due to the lithium plating risk, the fast-charging capability was always a tradeoff with the energy density and the cost for the current chemistry, using graphite anode. The Si anode
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Technology Analysis Power Technologies in EVs